Panic has set in at the Department of Justice as lawyers are considering fleeing the agency before Trump loyalists take over and execute his vision, according to reports.
Donald Trump’s scorn for the DOJ has only grown over the last four years as he became the subject of two criminal prosecutions, and he has previously talked of transforming the agency.
“Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds,” one DOJ attorney told Politico, who could only speak anonymously to avoid retribution from the president-elect and his loyalists.
“The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”
During the election campaign, Trump made it clear the prosecutions against him set “a terrible precedent” and hinted that he would use the law on Democrats if he was re-elected.
“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s gonna have to happen to them,” Trump said in June after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
In addition, Trump has a long list of “enemies” who he claims have wronged him and he has expressed a desire for retribution multiple times, including his threats to fire Special Counsel Jack Smith.
“Many federal employees are terrified that we’ll be replaced with partisan loyalists – not just because our jobs are on the line, but because we know that our democracy and country depend on a government supported by a merit-based, apolitical civil service,” Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told Politico.
Another former DOJ official said they believed Trump’s second term would be “worse” than the first. “It’s just a question of how much worse it’s going to be,” they told the outlet.
Staffers nervously await Trump’s appointment as attorney general and other senior positions.
According to Politico, Jeffrey Clark could be given a senior role, despite facing disciplinary action from the DC Bar, which found he “engaged in reckless dishonesty” over his role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
In January 2021, Trump tried to make Clark acting attorney general but was only stopped when several Trump-appointed DOJ officials threatened to resign over the appointment.
Other names tipped for the top job include Republican lawyer Mike Davis, who has come under fire for controversial “jokes” for threatening to “cage children” and for vowing to throw his rivals in “the gulag.”
Last week Davis also threatened New York Attorney General Letitia James. “I dare you to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term. Because listen here sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time,” he said. “And we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights.”
A former senior DOJ official reflected: “If you have one of these type of extreme candidates, you will see a significant amount of career staff say, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this. This is antithetical to who this department is.’ I think that will absolutely inform whether or not a good chunk of career staff – whether people stay or go.”
However, other lawyers at the agency and critics maintain it’s essential staff keep doing their jobs.
“You need career people there to make sure that the maniacs in charge just can’t, like, run roughshod over federal laws and DOJ practice,” a current DOJ lawyer told Politico. “I was able to tone down briefs in a way that people who would have replaced me, would not have.”
Norm Eisen, one of Trump’s leading legal critics, also told the outlet that staffers “should absolutely stay” to “preserve the republic.”
“That’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to deal with a boss who’s appointed by Donald Trump every day, but I know from my own experience in government that you can’t just show up and snap your fingers,” Eisen said. “And the continuity of that career civil service staff will be very, very important to the preservation of the republic.”
“Donald Trump has learned about how to manage the federal bureaucracy, so, sure, it’s going to be worse,” he added. “But that doesn’t mean it will be easy for him, so I think it will be important for people to stay put.”
A study in 2018 in the wake of the Mueller investigation into Trump’s campaign ties to Russia assessed how much control the president has over the attorney general and the DOJ.
It concluded that while “prosecutorial independence has become a cornerstone of American democracy,” the DOJ is not so secure that “it couldn’t be dismantled by a president who was firmly committed to doing so,” The Guardian reported.
The Independent has contacted the DOJ for comment.
